London-based electronic artist elshuffles is making a return; releasing his second album who bang the noise.
The album follows 2021’s Disinformation Party, and while his debut was a collage made up of a few years of exploring different instruments and sounds, who bang the noise takes a different direction, depicting the melting-pot nature of London life across influences from techno, ambient, drone and electronica.
From the dawning ambient splendour of album opener fading poetry, you’re immediately drawn into elshuffles deeply atmospheric vision. And though the tone shifts from light to dark multiple times over the course of its running time, that attention to mood and atmosphere remains in sharp focus.
Ahead of its release, we caught up with the mysterious producer for a chat.
Connect with elshuffles on Soundcloud | Instagram | Bandcamp
Thanks for talking to us today – how’s the year been treating you so far?
Hey, yeah all good, to be fair it’s been a really good year for me so far, in lots of different ways.
First of all, we want to get to know you “from the beginning”. How did your history with music begin?
I first started by listening to my Dad’s tapes on my Walkman!! There was always music on in the car when I was a kid. But for electronic music a starting point was probably when I discovered Jeff Mills and his breed of music! What a powerhouse.
Did you grow up in London?
No, I moved about a bit when I was young, but I’ve been here for the last 20 years.
What influence do you think the city has had on your own musical direction?
It’s had a huge influence as I’ve been to see so much live music in the city, so I’m pretty sure that’s really taken me where I am now.
The city has arguably the most diverse music scene in the world – are there any specific niches within the subculture you find yourself especially drawn towards?
I guess it’s always been dance music and specifically techno. You can’t beat a huge London rave. But added to that I’ve seen some great ambient and drone small gigs, these are just as powerful.
How long did the recording process take, and did you hit any brick wall during its creation?
It probably took about a year, occasionally I would have a week off actual creating but take time to let the music settle and give it space. I’d then return slightly refreshed and go again.
The album is heavily inspired by and themed around the city – did you take a recorder out into the field to capture London itself at any point?
Yeah, I’m always recording, can’t get enough of it. I love the snippets of sounds that you can capture if you look and listen hard enough. I wanted to take strands of London and weave that into the project.
What does your current studio set up look like? Lots of hardware, or are you mainly ‘out of the box’ type producers?
The computer is the center of the studio with lots of great plugins, but also there’s a bit of hardware, some guitar pedals that I run guitar and other bits through such as an op1 or 4 track tape recorder. I’m also taking my first steps into modular so we’ll see how that goes.
Other than the album, what should we be looking out for from you in the next few months?
I try and put out random musical sketch videos, these are just little ideas. But I’m always working on new stuff so we’ll see where that goes!?
What is the best advice you ever received as an artist?
I think the most prevalent I’ve heard recently and which I have written up in the studio are “can I control it? If so worry about it”. That’s how I think most of the time, not just for creating music.
Anything else you’d like to tell us…?
If you can’t be good be careful.
Thank you.
